Peter Whyte – Near Death

In his recent photographic series entitled Near Death, WHYTE examines the structural beauty and intricacy of botanical specimens as they grow nearer to the point of their demise.

From the spiraling Fibonacci sequence patterning of Sunflower, 2011, that evidences the building blocks of the universe, through to the faltering anthropomorphic forms of Tulip, 2012, that chants ‘memento mori’ – we are reminded of our own mortality and the transient nature of human existence.

Depicted achromatically, the once familiar flora are pictured devoid of colour, allowing WHYTE to eloquently convey the poetry of the life / death cycle with its implication for renewal.

In Imagined Landscapes, 2011, WHYTE constructs illusionary scenes in his photographic studio. Resembling a rippling pool of water under a tempestuous sky, the images retain an ambiguity while eliciting a sense of the familiar. Due to the reductive and constructed nature of the process, scale and geographic location are omitted as extraneous details. For WHYTE this approach is geared towards his primary artistic intention in this body of works – “I seek to understand in a landscape, that which moves the soul.”

PETER WHYTE is a Hobart-based artist with a respected photography and graphic design studio. He has shown in numerous exhibitions and collected a number of awards. Recently WHYTE has documented the MONA art collection for David Walsh culminating in the tome titled Monanisms.

PETER WHYTE is proudly exhibited by ANITA TRAVERSO GALLERY as part of their new ongoing AT_SALON program for unrepresented artists.